


carly rae jepsen said it first, and her word is basically law so (run away with me)

by beepbedeep



Category: Atypical (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, I love them so much, THE BEST, fake insight that no one asked for, like the best two people, um hi welcome to my favorites, you should too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 16:23:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21413116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beepbedeep/pseuds/beepbedeep
Summary: Casey wants things. She wants things so badly that sometimes it feels like her bones might snap, because imagining a future outside of this place feels exactly like running. And Casey loves running, loves it more than just about anything. Except that’s not quite true.
Relationships: Casey Gardner/Izzie
Comments: 9
Kudos: 108





	carly rae jepsen said it first, and her word is basically law so (run away with me)

Casey is going to leave this place. This town. She doesn’t understand why people romanticize small New England towns – they’re tiny and boring and full of people who don’t have anything better to do with their lives than cheat on their perfectly fine husbands and ruin their families.   
Or, maybe that’s too specific of an example, maybe some people manage to be actually happy here for their whole lives, but Casey won’t. She isn’t. She doesn’t love this place, and never really has, beyond a vague kind of allegiance to the stuff she’s always known. (but then again, Casey is really ready for some change.) 

It’s not even that she lives in an inherently terrible place, it just feels . . . too small. Like all the streets are lined up too neatly or something. Casey has never been that neat. (half of the atoms in her body don’t fit here – NOT that those are due to her mother’s genes or anything. But this isn’t her place. Not like Sam.) Evan belongs here, she knows that just as strongly as she’s always known that she doesn’t. He wanders through the trees and drives his car at suburban pace – but happily – and mostly likes his job at Don’s and relaxes every muscle in his body when they lie on her bed for hours. And he’s doing stuff, working on EMT training, pushing his life forwards, he just doesn’t need to go anywhere else for that to happen. Casey doesn’t know if she’s even capable of relaxing like that. Being here, taking care of people (in her highly specific way), she can’t afford to slow down. (If she ever resents Evan, it’s because of that. Not that she’d ever admit it, because being happy is an insane reason to slightly-hate someone you care about. But it’s hard to not envy the easy with which he moves through this part of the world. She wants to be content too.) 

Besides, Casey _wants_ things. She wants things so badly that sometimes it feels like her bones might snap, because imagining a future outside of this place feels exactly like running. And Casey loves running, loves it more than just about anything. Except that’s not quite true. Because Casey loves her brother, she loves her dad, she loves Evan, she loves her friends, she doesn’t hate her mom as much as she wants to, leaving won’t ever be easy. And as much as her family wants Casey to be happy, they also want her to stay. Their world balances so precariously already (especially with Elsa’s newfound inability to keep it in her pants) that leaving would be impossibly, practically speaking. (except that it’s not. except that she could get a scholarship to a school far away, and go there, and no one would really be able to stop her.) 

Casey doesn’t know if she can spend the rest of her life like this, waiting, trying to maintain something that might, through no fault of your own, already be broken. Imaging that kind of future feels like suffocation. (so she runs, she runs because maybe it could get her out of here and even if it can’t at least she’s moving, at least she’s still alive.) And it almost isn’t that bad. Their tiny Connecticut town is mostly fine (even if it’s actually not). Casey has school, and her friends, and Sam and her dad, and Evan. They’re always who it comes down to. Her dad needs support, she can’t leave him, right? Other than the fact that he’s an adult and she could come visit so maybe that would be fine. But Sam! He needs her. Except that he’s officially at college and really doing great and she can bug him over skype anyway, plus all their breaks would line up, so maybe he would be ok too. 

So that just leaves Evan. But there isn’t a solution to Evan. (Casey’s thought through every single one already.) He belongs here, this place is a part of him, and he’s gonna have an awesome life, she is sure of it, but he’s going to do it here. Here, in the place she needs to escape. And Evan is amazing, he’s a better boyfriend than Casey would have thought existed, and he’s a really, really good person, and he’s easy to get lost in, so being here is ok. Casey teases (and supports!) Sam, and reminds her dad to relax and even talks to her mom sometimes, and runs and runs and runs and it all really could be ok. At least for a while. At least until the wanting gets to big or she runs too far or has to reform her entire personality in order to survive here. But it could work. She might be fine, she might forget that she ever wanted something else. 

Except, of course, for Izzie. Izzie, who lives in Casey’s head under an entire separate category – not “friend” like Sharice, or “distraction” like school. Izzie defies all of Casey’s boundaries, so she has her very own spot and Casey’s still not sure why, but maybe it’s just because Izzie is the only person who’s ever been willing to run (away) with her. Izzie gets it, why Casey can’t be here forever, and yeah she’s an empathic friend, but Casey knows that the desire to leave itches just as strongly under Izzie’s skin as it does her own. Casey’s never met anyone like that, ever. Someone who is arguably completely different except that they are made of the same things and want matching futures. Their reasons for wanting to run, to discover more might be oceans apart, but they are both looking out from the same place (EW SAPPY) and Casey doesn’t want Izzie to ever leave her side. 

So Casey is going to leave this town someday. She knows it, knows it like she knows her heart beats or knows she loves her brother or knows her dad needs help or knows that something with Evan is shifting and doesn’t understand how to stop it because she knows it has something to do with Izzie and Casey might talk a good game but she will never, ever stop caring about the other girl. (for more reasons than their shared aspirations, because Casey is more familiar with her feelings than she admits and yes, she’s in love with the idea of leaving, but she also might be in love with Izzie, for reasons that have nothing to do with the future and everything to do with now, with the way her hair smells and her skin feels and her laugh sounds, her incomparable bravery and spark, and sarcasm and everything else. Everything that Casey has memorized because it is _Izzie_ and Casey cannot imagine ever getting enough of her.) These are irrefutable truths. 

And yes, the pull to leave fades away sometimes, when Sam helps her with homework or when Evan smiles and tugs her under his arm, but it is always there. Always. And that makes things hard sometimes, because being a person to her friends is hard, when Casey feels like she’s already gone. It’s hard to be authentic, to make declarations about the future when every fiber of your being is set on leaving. But Casey loves her people, loves her boyfriend and her family so she pinches her eyes shut and screams on empty streets and pretends that everything is going to be ok. That’s why Clayton is eventually a welcome distraction, because Casey can’t bring herself to really care, in a long-term kind of way, about most of the people there. Most people. 

Izzie meets her at their lockers, every morning just like a promise, and Casey might be reading into it, but it seems like there’s a message in her eyes. 

_I’m here. I’m ready. Let’s go. (let’s run, let’s walk, let’s take a train across the country, just please, please, please don’t leave without me because I need this just as much as you.)_


End file.
